effecient way for piecrusts?

matt calnen | Posted in General Discussion on January 12, 2007 06:23am

I was wondering if anyone out there had a good way of making piecrust table tops that was quicker than hand carving it all. I normally hog most of the waste with a router than clean up the rest with chisels and gouges.

Replies

hammer1 | Jan 12, 2007 06:33pm | #1
In the old days they did it with an apprentice cranking the hand turned lathe.

Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
RickL | Jan 12, 2007 07:53pm | #2
A pin router and template would be the next step. It would still take some handwork for the sharp corners. http://www.grizzly.com/products/mach-specs.aspx?key=560020

Some of the router books get into pin routers. You won't find anything much on the web on the virtues of pin routers. It's one of those machines in the trades where you learn from the other machine operators.

Obviously the next level is CNC. Again some handwork for the sharp edges is required.
pins | Jan 12, 2007 11:42pm | #3
Matt,

I've made four, two large and low and two smaller and taller, and I'm no expert, but here's what I did:

First you have to lay out the edges, inside and out and I used a 1/4" piece of plywood equal to 1/4 of the circle.

Then I mounted a router in the center of a piece of 1/4" plexiglass just about twice as long as the diameter of the larger circle, and about 12" wide.

Using that jig allowed me to keep the router bit at a constant depth all the time. I hogged out as much as I could, meaning as close to the inside edge as I dared, starting in the center and moving the router clockwise, then finished with chisels and gouges.

I used a bowl shaped router bit, not round or straight.

It was a very messy job and probably would be much easier if I had a router with a dust collecting attachment.

pins
JiminFla | Jan 13, 2007 12:46am | #4
I just finished one and also used a bowl-shaped router bit to hog out most of the wood. I used a circle jig on the router and cut concentric circles. When I got too close to the center for it to work, it attached a piece of wood to the bottom of the router equal to the depth of cut so that I could continue to route without the jig. It takes a while and you need to clean up the small irregularities that occur, but it works fairly well. I used gouges to do the pie crust itself.